In article <hassan.65.00397563 at rfhsm.ac.uk> hassan at rfhsm.ac.uk (Mr Hassan Abdulrazzak) writes:
>This is probably a stupid question for which there is a simple answer.
>Has any one tried selecting for intelligence in animals. For example by
>getting a population of rats to complete some test (eg. passive avoidance) and
>then select the rats that performed best and mated them and then tested the
>progeny, etc.
I'm afraid I can't give references, but one of my psychology books
described this experiment. It turned out that they had selected
for...the ability to run mazes well.
Rats are already smart, given the size of their brains. There are
probably no trivial or quick changes to make them much smarter.
The increase in intelligence between humans and chimpanzees was
accompanied by substantial changes in brain case shape and size,
and this sort of thing is not selectable in a few generations.
Mary Kuhner mkkuhner at genetics.washington.edu
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